Melissa Knits

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Wool People is a quarterly online collection of knit patterns. The collection is curated by Jared Flood and contains knit patterns by many different and very talented designers.

Woodfords by Elizabeth Doherty is currently the hottest of the Wool People patterns right now. This sweater is knit in fingering weight and looks like the perfect warm-you-up-in-the-office cardi!

Cedarwood by Alicia Plummer really caught my eye. I love the simple shaping and the little bit of texture on this cardigan. Its just enought to keep it interesting, but not so complicated that you can't work on it while watching your favorite TV show.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Getting ready for the holidays as a fiber artist takes some months of planning and knitting or crocheting. You want to make gifts for all those deserving people in your life. But sometimes we don’t plan ahead as much as we should. That’s where the Indie Gift-A-Long comes in. The Indie GAL (short for Gift-A-Long) is a promotion by Indie Designers to kick off your holiday crafting. Between November 13th and November 21st many indie designers will be discounting several of their patterns 25%. That is a great deal and you should take advantage of it! Just use coupon code “giftalong2014” when you check out the patterns on Ravelry. The group http://www.ravelry.com/groups/indie-design-gift-a-long gives some more details on this like who and what patterns are being discounted.

Once you buy a pattern you can participate in the Knit-a-long and Crochet-a-long (KAL/CAL). The KAL/CAL lasts for 2 months as there are corresponding threads to the type of pattern you’ll be crafting. Just take for example the Mr. Smith Cowl I talked about in my last post. Now unfortunately, this one is not included in the discount group, but I can still knit it up and hashtag it #giftalong2014neck. I link it in the thread post in the group and then I (and you can be too!) am eligible for a prize. Physical prizes (skeins of yarn) and digital prizes (select patterns). Of course, these projects can only be started between November 13th and December 31st. So get over to Ravelry and check out what patterns are discounted and start crafting!

Monday, November 10, 2014

Blogging is new to me, so bear with me. I've been knitting for about 5 years now. It was a rocky start with a messy dish cloth. I moved up to a ribbed scarf and once I finished that made the matching hat. After that I never looked back.

I'm a proficient sweater knitter now and made most every type of knitted garment there is.

Today I saw this new pattern: mr. Smith by Hanna Maciejewska

I'm not sure what about it caught my eye. ;)

Rummaging through my stash produced some Plucky traveler Aran that had been marinating.